CWorld (Over Heaven)

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure has currently become my own little obsession as of late. And good god, what an adventure that I got myself into. Literally every single episode is built upon the other like a building block, and further enhances the emotion that comes with it to new heights. There’s power, there’s passion, and there’s prestige in virtually every single moment the show brings. Flamboyance without looking idiotic, actions without pretense. JJBA was never meant to be designed to be complex nor complicated to watch, but the show is so ridiculously enjoyable to tag along with the adventure that it doesn’t really matter. This is going to be a four-part review along the modern anime adaptation of the famous shonen manga series illustrated by Hirohiko Araki, depicting every arc of the show in depth until the release of Part 4: Diamond is Unbreakable this year, something that I’m extremely excited about.

So let’s get started!



Phantom Blood chronicles the struggles of the cursed Joestar bloodline against the forces of Evil. Our story goes way back to 1880 England, as we follow the young Jonathan Joestar as he matures with and eventually combats his adoptive brother, the cunning, merciless Dio Brando. The two of them are simply tied to one another and embody the perspectives of good and evil. Basically everything that Jonathan stands for is to be gentlemen-like, started from his desire to save other people to showing empathy and mercy to the enemy. He is not only a pure soul, but there is not even a single trace of evil in his character at all. He does not rely on trickery to fool other people, he is friendly and sincere and embodies the “Ultimate Good” that could be brought forth in the show. Dio, on the other hand, is a fantastic example of the true villain in the series. He isn’t a good guy in the slightest, there is no sort of redeeming goodness in his soul. Dio Brando is pure evil from beginning to the end, with a sense of evil and corruption around his character. You want to feel disgusted by him, yet you can’t help but be fascinated and attracted to him. He is ambitious, sadistic, arrogant, and megalomaniacal, yet he posses an almost uncanny charismatic and intelligent persona in his character. He is one of the worst people that you would ever meet, he is essentially the antichrist yet apart of you would want to follow him as a leader. Dio is easily my favourite character in the entire series because of these traits, and it’s really the conflict of these two values that the two main characters of the series that sets the stage for not only this entire Part, but the entire manga and anime. Sometimes you don’t need to make your characters too complicated, sometimes all you need is a simple clash of these two values.

The story begins in England, 1880 with young Jonathan Joestar, known to his friends as JoJo, living at his father George's wealthy estate. Another young man, Dio Brando, is adopted by them having recently lost his father, Dario Brando. George believed that he and his infant son were rescued by Dario during a stagecoach accident, in which his wife lost her life, when in fact Dario was trying to loot their corpses. Jonathan attempts to befriend Dio, unaware of his plan to drive him into discredit and earn George's trust so that he can become the sole heir to the Joestar fortune. As part of his scheme to torment Jonathan, Dio violently beats him in a boxing match, turns his friends against him, steals his girlfriend Erina's first kiss, and even burns his dog Danny to death in an incinerator, while presenting himself before Jonathan's father as a better gentleman and student than his adoptive brother. Normally, everything would go downhill from there. But overtime, roughly seven years passing, Jonathan has grown up and quickly begins to close the gap that Dio originally created. But as Dio begins to make his move to become the heir of the Joestar Fortune with a sinister plot, Jonathan tries his best to foil his adoptive brother’s plans, where things quickly escalate.


In a shellnut

To me, Phantom Blood could not hold such a high regard as a show from fans if it was to be solely carried by the simple concept of good and evil from the main characters. The side characters also have their own added spice to the series itself, and the fan favourite in the manga community would easily go to Speedwagon. “Why?” you ask? From the very start his loyalty to Jojo’s virtuous and heroic nature is second to none, and his narration provides extra hype and a nice touch to the rough nature of the fist fights. He isn’t a fighter, but he a special extra to make the show simply so fun to watch. At the same time, Zeppi acts as the ‘Obi-Wan’ to Jojo’s ‘Skywalker’, playing the role of the mentor extremely well to the young Jonathan. He is knowledgeable, caring and very quirky at the same time. Sadly, acting as the Obi-Wan eventually catches up to him and his departure from the party was enough to make you cry manly tears.


But that is a good thing especially when the anime embraces the crazy art style of the original manga, with an equally insane colour pallet to bring this bizarre adventure to life. The character design in the anime also takes a slight adjustment from the original material in the first arc to Araki’s evolving art throughout the show, which shows with strong art, masculine nature and a couple of signature poses now and then that make the show absolutely wonderful to watch. And especially from such a small studio such as David Production, which does not have a very big budget animation-wise. To compensate for this, the show is cleverly directed and animated strongly almost every damn time. Even a normal screenshot is just pretty to look at, it’s that damn good looking.

With the first Part being set in Victorian England, the BGM is filled with some very nice orchestral pieces, sometimes integrated so well that I had to rewind to notice what piece is actually playing. But in terms of audio, the voices of the characters themselves are arguably the best part about the show. Every character has some fairly strong performances, but the favourite would have to go to Koyasu Takehito as Dio Brando, with his voice is very well suited for a character that’s sexy yet pure evil. And you can tell that the voice actors had their fun in this project, and their raw energy and passion alone can be seen in the series itself.



When talking about Jojo, one must bring up the musical side of things. Araki’s affinity for music can be seen into how well the opening and ending songs are, with quick flashes from the original manga playing along with smooth CGI and professional directing in the OP. Its beautiful, in your face with high octane excitement and the lyrics talks about the endless rivalry between Jojo and Dio, alongside the human courage. Araki personally summaries that “the theme of this work is 'living'. Through the two main characters, I want to examine two ways of living. It's all about singing the hymn of the battle between 'human' and 'non-human'…” But I’m particularly impressed about how long the final line was held, where the lyrics follow as “Sono chi no Sadame, JOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOJO!” I mean seriously, he holds it for like 8 seconds. It’s incredible.


"OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOJO!"

If the OP shows the powerful storytelling side of the show, then the ED illustrated the nature of the series itself. Surprisingly enough, the song that was chosen was “Roundabout” by YES, an English band from the early 70’s. All doubts that I had about the song were instantly silenced as the intro guitar melody fits the tones the series had. You can almost put that song to anything, horror, action, you name it. The tune fit perfectly, and the dirty bassline was fantastic. The visuals in the ED also help explain the history of the part, which at the same time, was timed perfectly. I never skilled the OP or the ED, since it’s needed for the entire experience.

All and all, Part 1 is a true shonen revenge story. Despite the story not exactly being groundbreaking by today’s standards, the pacing is fantastic and nothing feels rushed at all. Emotions could be felt by the characters, and the fans loved it. In terms of style, nothing is being restrained to the visual representation at all. The first arc, tragic, and exciting all in a single bound.

And so, the journey is continued in Part 2
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Phantom Blood is rated 8.5 out of 10 Lionhearts

(Haven't done one of these in a while. Let's get back to business, shall we?




My exceptions are usually set on the stage of your typical movie-geek level. I went in with the lowest expectations possible, knowing that this movie is going to be really bad. But I would go to such lengths to say that this movie is just a pure waste of time, where taking it seriously would provide give you a very minor case of serious brain damage...

Stereotypes is the weapon of choice for the movie based on revealing lewd dolls with huge eyes, full lips and no noses. Dolls with an overinflated infatuation with clothes, shoes and make-up aimed at a young-teen audience that basically wanted to be barbie for an older and more mature audience. You've heard about or even bought some of these dolls; now let's see if you can sit through the movie.



Nope? I thought so.

What you are witnessing is a fine example of American consumerism run amok without a leash to restrain itself, nor a master to even tame the wild beast that this movie truly is. Fortunately for you, this doesn't star Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian. It its however, one of those typical highschool movies aimed at teenage girls. As long as they can remember, Yasmin, Jade, Sasha and Cloe have been "BFF" - Best Friends Forever. Inseparable since they first met, the young girls have always supported each other's individual personalities, talents and fabulous fashion styles. These four girls enter the dangerous and inhospitable world of High School, specifically Carry Nation High. Yasmin, Jade, Sasha and Cloe face a brand new world: a blackboard jungle, where for the first time they discover life as a teenager means dealing with a system of social cliques, all strictly enforced by student body president Meredith Baxter Dimly. Finding themselves being pulled further and further apart, the girls band together and rise up as "the Bratz" to fight peer pressure, in turn learning how true empowerment means standing up for your friends, being true to oneself and living out one's dreams & aspirations.

I'm not making this crap up. This is the synopsis of the movie.




At somepoint in the movie, one particularly imfamous scene comes up. Meredith 's sweet 16 party that more closely resembles a street parade, but the party audeience features your typical stuck-up plastic girls along with horny boys trying to get laid. Also trying to be what I could only sum up as “Hip and Fresh” , there are pop-culture references all over the place. One bit including an MTV crew that films the celebration (a blatant product placement for the “My Super Sweet 16" show) and a the video clip that appears on YouTube.



Appropriate reaction is appropriate

Oh, there's also a deaf kid who somehow has the power to hear Yasmin singing. And spin turntables

But hey! At least the monkeys with a typewriter that could be listed as “Screenwriters” tried to incorperate imparting moral lessons. Parents are good and should always be listened to, Ignoring your friends is bad, Fashion and Commercialism is good. You know, Capitalism! That's the thing we should be teaching to 11-13 year olds! And hey! This is also an American movie, so that's to be expected in the long run.


It's like the Cold War never ended......


This is a difficult subgenre, there is not a chance in hell that you are able to satisfy everybody even if you happened to be Stanley Kubrick or Christopher Nolan. The entire academy into divided into clicks (emo's, skaters, geeks, potheads, jocks, tree-huggers and other assorted losers). Why anyone wishes to accept this type of sterotypical hand-holding is beyond me, but anyway....

Brats. So full of propaganda and ridiculous role-models, not even adults would understand.



This movie has received One out of Five Lionhearts​

[video=youtube;4RBXypX4qWI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RBXypX4qWI[/video]​

Let's rewind the clocks back to 1997, about 18 years ago. The year where Mike Tyson bites Evander Holyfield's ear, Tiger Woods became the youngest ever golfer to win the Masters ,Princess Diana of Wales is killed in a car crash and The Simpsons becomes the longest-running prime-time animated series of all time. .It was also a good year for Hollywood, with quite a few successful films being released. Men in Black, The Fifth Element, Tomorrow Never Dies, Starship Troopers and this really obscure movie that nobody has ever heard of, called Titanic, just to just name a few. Hell, even Princess Mononoke deserves a honourable mention.

But then again, it was also pretty bad. We had the Spawn movie, Anaconda and yet, one of these movies completely outclassed them all in terms of terrible. There was a movie with wooden performances and superhero nipples, there was a film that almost killed the DC Comics superhero movie franchise. There was a movie that was literally drowning in money and big-movie effects, along with having unspeakably bad performances. A film that promises and lacks snap or surprise, humour or even the basic necessity of an action movie, real thrills.

It's enough to drive you batty....

This is Batman and Robin, the worst Blockbuster of all time.

If we were to judge this movie by it's own worth, then Batman & Robin fails to engage the spirit of any of their characters and even fails at decent marketing in general. The movie ended up as an unbelievably shallow knock-off, leaving audiences to cringe at the unavoidable one-liners that make up an impressive amount of the script. I'm mean, seriously. The worst of the bunch is Mr.Freeze, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, where almost everytime he speaks in the movie, it has to tie in with a “Cold” joke. I would show you a piece of the dialogue, but I don't think it would do the movie any justice.

[video=youtube;SRH-Ywpz1_I]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRH-Ywpz1_I[/video]

Dude! You need to chill the **** out!​

Story-wise, it's not particularly engaging. According to the synopsis, this superhero adventure leaves Batman (George Clooney) and his partner, Robin (Chris O'Donnell), attempting to the foil the sinister schemes of a set of new villains, most notably the cold-hearted Mr. Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger)nd the sultry Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman). As the Dynamic Duo contends with these bad guys, a third hero, Batgirl (Alicia Silverstone), joins the ranks of the city's crime-fighters. It could sound like a somewhat exciting story, especially for a Superhero film in the 90's.

And surprise-suprise, it doesn't work. Personally, the casting itself had to the potential make a surprisingly good film. George Clooney could have made a great Batman (square jawed, popular with the ladies), but the script proved to be his biggest downfall due to the somewhat tame nature for it's PG-13 audience. Uma Thurman is perfect for Poison Ivy, and she is the ONLY actor that actually pulled off her role well. She also happened to be an attractive and quirky actress, but you wouldn't know it by the emphasis on camp context and innuendo in this film. Arnie didn't exactly need to be casted, but it's unfortunately time that we'll never get back. But Chris O'Donnell and Alicia Silverstone as Robin and Batgirl? Nope!

What happened? The first movie was the best of the series. Dark, psychotic and complex movie with over the top acting and settings. The Batmobile was beautiful, and so was the sets. The sequel shared some of the traits of its predecessor while adding more lunacy to the mix. It did suffer from the lack of talent (with a very notable Jack Nicholson)

And then Mr. Schumacher ruined everything.

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Since its from the same series, there is no excuse for the director to run wild and away from the spirit of the originals. We have a broken and tortured soul fighting to keep his humanity. When Schumacher took over however, Batman seems to have the coolest cars, to kiss the most beautiful girls and to have a lot of fun while doing this. At least the first two films acknowledged that killing or hurting people was a conscious choice which was painfully taken by Batman. Schumacher's films seemed to imply that violence was fun and part of Batman´s life.

http://fearo*squee!*hostplanet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/vlcsnap-2012-09-17-00h35m26s139.png
Let's forget that this moment NEVER HAPPENED!​

Batman & Robin is really beyond over the top, the costumes were a bit silly and the story was just too family friendly with the source material. The acting was just stupid and not true to Batman at all. The problem here was that the story and setting just had nothing to do with what Batman truly is and was just an excuse to spend stupid money. Just some cold-hearted director wishing for your capital....

I'll show myself out.....

This Movie received One out of Five Lionhearts

[video=youtube;UgXM7ivgYTo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgXM7ivgYTo[/video]​

"Do you like hurting other people?"

This is the question that you get asked in this top-down puzzle stealth shooter, and a question that we sometimes have to ask ourselves. Games that force the players to wonder about and to crush, kill, or shoot our enemies into brutal encounters. I mean, sure, we could just get told by people sometimes to look at some particularly nasty fellow and say "Kill that man". Anyone can enjoy violent video-games as much as the next person could.

But.... what if we have our own reasons to kill? What if that we can escape into conflict and have our reasons to murder the enemy, whether it's because of war, gangsters, monsters or mutants? The players are free from the burden of further thinking about the consequences of their actions But what happens when a game makes us constantly question our actions and morals? What happens when a game comes along and causes you to not only question your own actions and morals, but to question the violent nature of mankind?

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is Hotline Miami. And I love this game....

Hotline Miami paints an incredibly dark picture out of it's retro appearance. Born inside the actions of repeated retry's on a level is an unbelievable story and ultraviolent arcade hook. With the addition of your own brilliant descent into madness and psychopathic tendencies, and you have a game that has the cojones to make Grand Theft Auto look like Little Big Planet. Our vacation into the late 1980's begins with a tutorial that asks you personally, if you like hurting others. And let's pray that you are ready for what you are about to get yourself into, because what happens next is a nineteen chapter (about five hours) killing spree that all begin with a strange phone call asking you pay a visit to different venues and kill anyone you run into.

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Each chapter follows in this seemingly simple pattern, but an occasional cutscene that show's you plagued by visions involving three masked strangers who discuss your identity and actions makes you question yourself without ever giving you answers. It’s a very bold and daring narrative style that works absolutely in Hotline Miami’s favor. This game takes you by the horns straight off the bat.

While this game gives you a psychological sense of what it means to be a psychopathic vigilante, Hotline’s chapters are purely made to play with nothing else but your own sharp reflexes. Using the keyboard to move and the mouse to look around and attack (If you play the game on PC, although it's available on PS4, PS Vita and PS3), you’ll be sneaking up on your unsuspecting foes with ease and smash into them with melee weapons of from shooting them from behind. Your typical door can also be used to slam into enemies, knocking them unconscious out of pure force and allows you to jump onto them to violently finish them off. Your protagonist spares absolutely no mercy and ruthlessly cuts limbs off with knifes or swords, beats people’s heads in with a baseball bat, and even rips their guts and internal organs straight out of the bodies they used to call home. It's absolutely brutal, but so its the game's difficulty spike in higher levels.

All it takes is one hit from your enemy, and your dead. This makes you think about a measure of planning to make it out of a level alive. All the while, Hotline Miami also plays like a stealth title, and the game’s AI is deliberately stupid on purpose, so it's easy to sneak up on someone and finish him off. Enemies react when they hear you using firearms, but they fail to react even after you've thrown a knife at their buddy standing beside them. I find it strange that this game would use a design aspect like that, but it works somehow. Hotline Miami soon becomes a game of trial-and-error as you learn from every new experience, like the fact that enemies can see through windows or that dogs can’t be punched. Combat is formatted to keep you guessing, but never ends up being a frustrating (yet ridiculously enjoyable) experience.

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As much as it is an intense journey from start to finish, Hotline Miami plays out like any other arcade game. The game will reward you with bonuses at the end of each level, depending on your performance. Running into a room full of enemies without a plan would get you killed, but it will get you extra points for boldness and will give you a better grade overall. Your scores on each level will unlock weapons and masks you can equip at the beginning of each level, which grant you different abilities like faster finishing moves or silent guns.

These perks are awesome, but....it never really explains it's scoring system very well. This makes you always outperform yourself on every level to reach that mask or weapon that is just out of your grasp. The controls take some getting used to, but work fantastically when you learn how to play this blood-soaked paradise. Your attacks have this strange hit detection that are easily exploitable, which I don't know was a glitch or purposely designed into the game after one of my own experiences where an enemy will be shooting right at you, but if you get really close to him, you’ll avoid getting hurt altogether. This is great when it works, but not so much if the enemy manages to kill you. The game also has other technical issues, such as glitches that result in hard restarts and a spotty checkpoint save system. Hotline Miami can be played in potentially one sitting, but but a severe difficulty-spike for the trickier levels make you wish the game had a better saving system.

Seriously, screw this guy...​

Luckily, Hotline Miami's soundtrack and visuals are executed perfectly, and help complete your descent into its grimy neon world. The upbeat, synthetic music you’ll hear may very well change the atmosphere of what you’re doing. While Hotline Miami, may appear on the surface to be no more than mindless run and gunner, there are a handful of unforgettable moments that shown me that this game has more to offer here than an arcade style slaughterhouse.

For instance, at the end of each stage; after you've executed every living thing in the level, the music suddenly cuts to a dull drone and you're forced to walk back to your car, through each room, and past the mountains upon mountains of corpses that have built up during your murderous rampage. It's not only confronting but it's used to intensify your own self-reflection. It’s quite chilling and very effective.

Under Hotline Miami’s 16-bit appearance lies a very powerful game. While it may lack some technical abilities, Hotline Miami manages to take players down a road not many games do. It’s as much fun to play through the game as it is edifying to reflect on what we’ve done, and for that, it is quite powerful.

This game is given 9 out of 10 Lionhearts

[video=youtube;Y07I_KER5fE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y07I_KER5fE[/video]​

I've finally come to sit down and watch the movie based on the famous Robert A. Heinlein novel. Originally, I've understood that this was originally an extremely dystopian movie. That, and the fact the movie is also insanely violent and gory. The film is a satire of Fascism and war, an is set in a world of the future where militarism is the norm in a fascist human government. It's subtle and insidiously subversive movie that follows a quartet of high school friends as they make their varied ways through the military.

The reason being in that old American-style diplomatic governments collapsed centuries ago, and that the social system is essentially dedicated to either Citizens or Civilians. Civilians do not have many rights, although anybody can become a citizen. Citizens are people who joined the Federal Service and were honorably discharged and given franchise. The Federal Service does not necessarily mean the military, and applicants may be assigned to any field where they sacrifice their time and effort for the Federation (Teaching, any of the civil services, experimental test subjects, etc), though military service is the most glorified. Some rights given to these Citizens are that they are able to vote in Federation elections. If they wish to attend college, they are given lower or no tuition fees. They are given special permission to have more than two children,etc.It should be noted that members of the military are not given franchise while still serving, they must retire to be able to vote.

I thought about this concept for a while. Then I realized that this is actually quite scary, because this could actually happen.

When it was first released, most critics seemed to have been somewhat disturbed by the fact that the "Good guys" resembled the Nazis before it delved into a Human/Alien war. The reason is that the satire is extremely subtle. This is justified though since the vast majority of them are purely made up and take the form of propaganda disguised as news. One example is the gory of shot of a colony of 'Mormon extremists'. However, the novel and the movie completely satirizes the genre while being one of the best of in its category. If there wasn't a category yet, there should. There is so much about this film to analyze and it might even take a book to cover it all.

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This might just be me, but this is absolutely genius.

As mentioned before, Humanity has gone to war against a vast alien race of bugs. They're inhuman with a horrific sense of brutality. This is graphically demonstrated through out the film, but most famously in one of the many`Why We Fight' propaganda clips. This clip shows a cow is lead into a pen holding one of these giant insects, which quickly cleaves the cow in two then brutally scatters its organs and limbs across the room in a barbaric manner with a giant [Censored] logo covering what used to be a cow. This is supposed to instill fear to the audience.Images and thoughts must run throughout the imaginary audience. Thoughts like"These insects truly are barbaric, evil! Look what it did to that poor cow! They must be destroyed! Then the website narrator proudly states that people on Earth are doing their part in the war effort, even crushing bugs that are native to our own planet with children screaming "Die! Die! Die!" while their parents encourage it. How are the bug-stomping mother and her children any more humane and caring than the repulsive alien insects?

DIE, XENO SCUM!Oops, wrong franchise.​

The film is insanely violent, so I'm not even going to bother showing images and all that. Just google it, you'll find something. People are literally cut to pieces by the smaller creatures and slowly, painfully melted by a plasma the larger insects spray.This is a true gore-fest people, people [and cows] are getting hacked up relentlessly in this film to horrify us but we cheer as machine rifles and grenades blow the giant insects apart. This world is supposedly desensitized to violence to prove this, such as the propaganda videos which contain full gore shots of human that have been literally ripped apart. The body count is high on both sides. It is all literally and purposely utter, senseless violence. But good senseless violence, violence that is caused on purpose.

At one point, a psychic uses his powers to read one of the alien's emotions. He triumphantly yells,`It's afraid!' and a legion of human warriors jubilantly cheer at this pronouncement. The question is, who are the real monsters? What is humanity? These bugs are clearly not `human' yet they are intelligent, advanced, and most importantly have feelings. If they can be afraid, can they not also be sad, happy, or even love? They even show propaganda showing torture of these bugs. These are questions the writer has left to us to ask with out leading us by the hand

Starship Troopers is a film of many things, but its intellectually brilliant. The dazzling special effects and heart pounding action are all just a distraction--like all the noise in real life--from the more important things said here. The further the movie goes, the more the viewer realizes just how horrific and wrong this supposed utopia truly is. Patriotism is exploited to trick young men and women into going off to a pointless war. The beautiful ones are mercilessly chopped to pieces by their insectoid opponents. And the united world government uses its control of the media to brainwash the public into supporting this bloody war. It's not supposedly Nazi symbolism, or even American symbolism, But that's the whole point of this movie. The intertwining of this "perfect" society with such a deeply evil subtext is supposed to be disturbing. What's even more disturbing is how close to recent American history this movie truly is. Yes it's satrical at most, but it's satire on a very real thing. How dangerous is it to have a society where everyone looks the same, thinks the same, and acts the same, even to their own death?

Every aspect of the film was one gigantic, satirical slap in the face of humanity and no one noticed.

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Ladies and gentlemen, this might be the The Greatest Pro/Anti-War Movie Ever Made.

This movie has received Four and a Half Lionheart's out of Five

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Ever since its announcement, Destiny has had alot of expectations to live up to. As the newest game, Bungie, the people responsible for creating the hyper successful Halo franchise and the Marathon franchise before that, the very mention of Bungie creating a whole new series already gave birth to a level of anticipation only exceeded by the massive hype machine that projects its potential as a gaming powerhouse. Contrary to popular belief, Destiny is not as revolutionary as that hype led some to believe. In reality, the game is missing several features that feel like missteps or problems. Some problems that desperately need to be fixed. But that doesn’t change the fact that this isn’t a fun game.

The setting of the game presents the player with a rich story with loads of potential, potential that was unfortunately wasted enormously. Sometime in the near-future, a mysterious alien intelligence known as the Traveler arrives on Earth to gift humanity with its wisdom, and leads us into an unprecedented period of expansion and advancement in a majestic Golden Age. This Golden Age doesn’t last however, as the Travellers enemies find humanity and almost push humanity on the brink of extinction. The Traveler sacrificed itself to keep humanity alive, where it now hangs above the last city on earth where humanity has remained ever since. A couple hundreds of years later, you stand as a guardian of humanity, finally ready to push back against the endless tide of darkness. The lore of Destiny itself has been seeded in the roots of an excellently imagined universe, characterized by visions of mankind’s heroism and potential with fantastic elements of fantasy sci-fi. This universe is supported by absolutely gorgeous artwork and details and contains one of the best game soundtracks in years.

Unfortunately, the storymode set within that backdrop is absolutely awful. The story contains little to no character development, a boring plot thread about alien attackers, and an uneven narrative pacing. I think that it seems that many of the fundamental concepts of storytelling have been abandoned in the name of continuous action and standalone missions. Whatever the game doesn’t teach you while playing offers the story and lore to you through the Grimoire entries that unlock with a modicum of additional story explanation and act as an encyclopedia. The strange reason to include those only on the game’s website or Companion app means few will ever see these tidbits.

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Luckly, the story missions themselves are a blast. These missions offer you a mix of different activities for solo, cooperative, and competitive play. The game does an excellent job at providing activities for different moods and moments, from simple and short planetary patrols to the absolutely brutal three-person dungeons. Some areas of the game world are generally very interesting places, especially the Hellmouth on the Moon, but it’s too bad that so many of these missions start in the same places. A sense of repetition extends to mission objectives, which often falls back on a siege setup such as your AI companion needing time to hack something while you fight off attackers. However, the stage layouts and enemies help the battles feel distinct and generally fun.

Destiny’s design and emphasis is on team-play. While Solo play is an ideal choice for players looking for a challenge, this game just screams multiplayer to you and it’s given modes are more fun (and easier) with a friend or two at your side. The stylistic flow between missions is halted by the regular need to return home to a central social hub, known as The Tower, to receive mission rewards and to gear up with your latest weaponry, armour or the desire toe simply go shopping and receive bounties. This isn’t so bad, except the fact that Destiny suffers from some quite lengthy load times that stunt the momentum of a session. Bungie also needs to find more solutions to let players of differing levels play together through some sort of level match system. As it is, my experiences often resulted in a mismatched team and is doomed to either be too easy for one or too hard for another.

With Intense high-octane battles being Bungie’s forte, Destiny maintains the reputation for excellent combat mechanics. Each of several gun types feels balanced and rewarding, and the special powers, grenades, and melee attacks that are unique to each class are exciting to acquire and a joy to perfect. For me, the Nova Bomb finisher for my Warlock got me absolutely pumped when it was charged up. Our enemies often rely on numbers and damage potential over the complex A.I. routines. I mean, it’s always fun to mow through dozens of foes like an unstoppable badass that you are supposed to be in this universe, but our enemies rarely provide a strategic battle of intelligence and wit that can truly make a fight memorable. The characters are extremely mobile thanks to the inclusion of class-specific movement modes, such has lift or glide that propels your character to jump high into the air and can be very important during battles. In between combat, your trusty steed is a floating speeder bike that is way more fun to ride then what it should be. Although it doesn’t have weaponry to shoot baddies with, hearing the sounds of the speeder bike zoom past the battlefield is pure bliss and even riding alongside your friends is just pure magic. Come to think of it, I’d buy anything that has a speeder bike in it, riding across the wild wastelands in the coolest form of transport since Return of the Jedi.

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Although there are fewer customization options than some shooters, Destiny easily makes up for it during the fierce PvP battles. The Crucible, the PVP multiplayer mode of Destiny, is excellent. Double jumps and other forms of movement is important for the modes in the Crucible that provide depth to the well-thought maps that adds tension and actual tactical depth. Weapon skill and sharp shooting undoubtedly win the day, but the addition of supers moves makes sure that even new players to the game get brief moments of victory on the battlefield. I don’t really see any of these first batch of maps stand out, but they all include opportunities for strategies and mayhem. From interesting sniping spots to hidden alcoves from which to ambush unsuspecting foes. The only gripe is that matchmaking is very slow, but my matches always have offered mostly well-balanced teams even in the early days after launch. Unlike in the cooperative game, characters of vastly different levels will be able to play well together, but guardians who have not yet unlocked at least their core powers are at an extreme disadvantage against Level 25+ players that have access to ridiculously OP weaponry and armour, with a skill-tree to match. Fortunately, the Iron Banner acts as the “Hard Mode” for multiplayer where all of the extremely high levelled players fight, and this satisfies the bloodlust for the experienced players with the reward system being rarer loot drops than on the Crucible.

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That being said, I have one major problem with Destiny. The infamous loot drops. Needless to say, the loot system is unbelievably broken even for a game of this calibre. Every game has a way to reward its players. For example, you could spend five hours in a raid, and surely someone will receive something worth mentioning. Destiny fails to do that. You won’t earn items based on your skill, deaths counter, etc. Everything is on random. Completing any activity, like an online match, raid, or strike doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be receiving a good item. A player whose K/D ratio is beyond negative can receive a legendary engram, while someone who really contributed to the game can leave empty-handed. If you even manage to get anything at all, that alone is a slice of hell.

There’s also a situation in which after a five hour raid, nobody receives anything.

That’s fun, right?

Right?​

On another note, character progression is shared across competitive or solo/cooperative play, lending a sense of ownership and pride over your guardian. This sense of investment is increased through the opportunity to level multiple subclasses and improve weapons with their use. Loot certainly isn’t plentiful, but it almost has a meaningful important, so you’re making interesting choices about which gun to equip rather that suits your playstyle instead of mindlessly removing dozens of different weapons because they look boring or are generally weaker than the others. The three classes you can select from are more similar than they are supposed to be different, but each and every one of them does have a few exciting ways to stand out. From the Hunter’s unbearably badass bladedancer attacks to the Warlock’s glass cannon supermove, Nova Bomb. Your guardian’s options only become more flexible the higher your level is, leading to some nice opportunities to tweak a build to your specifications and playstyle.

Hitting level cap and completing the story is more of a mid-game marker instead of a colossal achievement. Farming reputation, using gear to level beyond the cap, and completing buils for each of your subclasses can be a lot of fun, but it won’t appeal to gamers who hate grinding. For those that do enjoy the process, it’s exciting to uncover higher level versions of old missions and learn some tricks along the way, such as the ability to repower teammates’ super abilities through careful timing of your deployments. From experience in the Crucible, this is a massive match-changer.

Although Destiny draws inspiration from MMO’s, I find it difficult to properly categorize and think about what the game is or will be. Even with its fantastic launch, Bungie already has plans in the works to expand the game with additional story content, raids, and new variations on competitive play. You can’t judge a game because of what for what it might be in the future. I just believe that even with its stumbles, the initial release of Destiny is a colossal achievement that intelligently collected several genre and video game elements and created something that resembled a unified whole. Of course, MMO’s are always growing with each new improvement. Maybe one day, the Loot system and some of the other problems that the game stumbles upon could be fixed. While this game is still learning how to grow and properly develop into a noisy teenager, this is the best game to currently come out on Next-Gen consoles. This is worth your attention.

This game has received Eight out of Ten Lionhearts​

This might be a day early, oh well.

I joined the site on October 6th 2011. Since then, I’ve had the time of my life. It’s not always about what fandom you are in, what you love, or the places you go. It’s the people you all meet. To all of the members on this site, I say thank you. Thanks for the memories that I have shared with you, the times we laughed and cried, the times we wanted to kill each other and the arguments and chaos that ensured.
Where did all the time go?

Always eager to spend time with all of you, and I shall be here until the end. Thank you

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Once upon a time, sci-fi and comic books had this strange charm about them that made the movie itself magical. From the USS Enterprise and Flash Gordon, this charm of the unknown and the beautiful feeling of immersive high fantasy has helped assist the cultures we now have today. Unfortunately, since “The Empire Strikes Back”, this genre of entertainment has become increasingly grim and realistic. Nowadays, Sci-Fi movies have been focused onto the horrors of humanity while trying to retain the magic that essentially made the entire genre what it used to be. While I don’t particularly mind something like this occurring, especially with the Science Fiction genre always expanding and evolving over time, sometimes we can never really see how ‘original’ it used to be. No movie has come out over recent years that captures the original magic and wonder, even when that movie tried to come even close.

Well, not until just recently.

“Guardians of the Galaxy” features our sarcastic and highly enjoyable adventurer Peter Quill finding himself with an enormous price on his head after stealing a mysterious orb coveted by Ronan the Accuser, a powerful villain with ambitions that threaten the entire universe. To evade this menace, he accidentally stumbles upon four other characters, the female and energetic assassin Gamora, the revenge fuelled Drax the Destroyer, the enhanced trigger-happy foul-mouthed raccoon known as Rocket and a walking tree creature called Groot, whose only words are ''I am Groot'' This group of misfits all come together and the five of them form an unlikely team.

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We can all say that unlike other movies of it’s kind, Marvel is known to make serious and enjoyable movies that actually have a sense of humour when needed. This might be the first Marvel release that despite packing some serious heat in terms of entertainment could actually be called a comedy. It’s really more of a spoof of space operas or a freeze-ray joke towards Lost in Space. But enough about that, let’s get to where some of the aspects of the film really shine. Characters !

Oh yeah, and you get to play everyone's favourite game in the movie - 'Spot Stan Lee'.

The characters are really well presented, their back stories are engaging and they pack plenty of emotion into their own aspect of the film. In layman’s terms, they're interesting and easy to like. Each character has some really special moments and keep us wanting for more and more. Rocket steals the show with his anger management problems and bright one-liners, while managing to make us laugh and cry at the same time. When we see this group of people each with their own agenda come together, this dynamic yet unlikely team worked really well. Star-Lord carried a lot of this weight, and the audience can be very sympathetic towards him. All the actors do a great job at portraying there characters, they actually feel like real human beings. Real characters that you want to get to know about them and their struggles and even become attached to them. Every character in the movie got their time to shine. Everyone is pitch perfect in their roles even Batista! Everything about the characters in this movie, from character development to even the smallest details are absolutely.spot.on .

[video=youtube;KiAFwV2emZQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiAFwV2emZQ[/video]

The CGI in this film is absolutely fantastic as well. Although Cooper and Diesel give terrific vocal performances, it would be for nothing if it wasn’t for the stunning CGI work done to bring these characters to life. It’s tough to make a raccoon and a tree look just as real as the three humans that they’re teaming up with, but the work is so good that it feels completely real. CGI, depending on the style of film, what can make or break a movie. But the realism of the CGI is absolutely ridiculous, to the point where it’s almost real. The CGI work on Rocket and Groot is very impressive, and so was the choice to go with real (not digital) makeup on many of the characters, Gamora, Drax, and Nebula included. Of course, the real makeup may have taken numerous hours daily to apply but it can absolutely make your movie look hundreds of times more authentic. This type of filmmaking unfortunately isn’t used as much because it’s more expensive in almost every way, but it’s clear that it makes for a much better looking final product. It’s really pretty eye-candy.

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What makes the movie so damn enjoyable is how fun it is. Guardians of the Galaxy specialises in fun, buckets upon buckets of fun. Just as the team makes do with the junk they find around them, the film feels like a mound of gems culled from decades of pop-culture scavenging: You can defiantly see it inside this film. An evil galactic conqueror with ships that looked like something out of Lylat Wars wanting to take over the universe, but encountered Han Solo, Princess Leia and company. The script, by the film’s director James Gunn and Nicole Perlman, also deserves a mention and shares the jokes democratically and tends towards the quotable: in particular, the use of “pelvic sorcery”.

Propelled by a killer 1980s music soundtrack, director/co-writer James Gunn frames all the of this magnificent film and big-budget production with an comic vibe that shines in fun and bubbly. But rather than detract from the necessary dashes of drama, Gunn can suddenly change the vibe and actually make you feel towards the characters he’s brought to life.

Guardians of the Galaxy also comes closest to recreating that feel we got from Star Wars, that the galaxy was essentially a neighbourhood and the core band of characters were the type of fun, heroic, strongly motivated, vaguely idealistic people you could easily spend a franchise with.

I love this movie, and it deserves the score it receives. Yes! For the first time ever, we have a perfect score!

[video=youtube;04Jkoa8nXT0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04Jkoa8nXT0[/video]​

This pretty much sums the whole movie up​

This movie received Five out of Five Lionhearts

[video=vimeo;104499658]https://vimeo.com/104499658[/video]

So um....this happened. *Some bad language*

[video=vimeo;101972457]http://vimeo.com/101972457[/video]

Couple things I need to point out. This is obvious test footage (possibly even a fan video), and it looks pretty heavily CGI'd, so this is no confirmation that the movie will be going ahead. However, this confirms that after spending years in development hell, a Deadpool movie is underway. From what I can tell, the voice work is Ryan Reynolds. This means that the movie would be an obvious action comedy (huge emphasis on the comedy).

We have deadpool talking through the forth wall and we have nice touches in some of the scenes, such as the crayons in the opening shot. Of course, this is basically a movie pitch, which means that the real movie would possibly be live-action.

If this is 100% legit, then the merc with a mouth is getting his own movie.

It’s not very often that I decide to review a video game instead of a movie. I was originally going to focus on game reviews instead of movies since I tend to be extremely critical and passionate about gaming. For me, movie reviews tend to be more fun since I can focus on a whole bunch of aspects and differences about the movie instead of the several aspects that I tend to find in video games. But hey, there’s a first time for everything.

Legendary game developer Hideo Kojima's very long-running series has always been a game of hide-and-seek: creeping in khaki, sneaking with silencers. Sure, the tense scuttles past armed guards under a cardboard box are usually followed by a tense struggle about standoffs and philosophical views about warfare, but the stealth espionage series has brought together the most memorable video game bosses of all time. But this turns out that this game was not the game that Konami originally set out to make.

This game, originally titled Metal Gear Solid: Rising, was announced in 2009 and was going to be based around a swordplay-based spin-off of the tactical stealth series. One period of development hell where rumours of near-cancellation and rusty development later, Metal Gear Rising has been reborn. Kojima and his team collaborated with what I honestly consider the best active Japanese developer team, Platinum Games, a team that has shown itself suited to deliver on that initial promise of free-form violence that made itself famous with the works of Bayonetta. While Platinum handled the game play mechanics of the game, series creator Kojima Productions has overseen development to ensure something recognizably "Metal Gear” and went ahead with the other aspects of the game. I never really played a Metal Gear game prior to playing this game. I understood the story, knew the bosses and other aspects of the series. But with the strengths of Kojima Productions in its legendary story and lore design and Platinum Games in developing exhilarating action. In the end, remaking the game from scratch was a good call. I had a feeling that this game was going to deliver something excellent. A fantastic story, memorable boss battles, awesome soundtrack and a solid gameplay mechanic.

And holy s**t did this game deliver what it promised.



Set about four years of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots in 2018, Revengeance allows you to play as Metal Gear Solid 2 lead Raiden in the middle of a globetrotting battle with interesting super-soldiers of a major Private Military Company named Desperado Enforcement, uncovering a strange military conspiracy. Initially unprepared, Raiden finds himself personally invested in taking down Desperado and its politically connected backers in a Kill-Bill worthy revenge story.

While the game did give you insight into Raiden's background as a child soldier, Revengeance also takes the gameplay possibilities of his transformation into a cyborg ninja and with Platinum Games at the helm, takes everything right up to eleven. This game easily favors action over stealth. Previous Metal Gear heroes Snake and Big Boss were known for their ability to sneak and hide, and Revengeance does actually present presents situations where sneaking provides a unique advantage. But then again, with Raiden being the character he is in this game and given the aspects of the game, I went into action at every opportunity. The swordplay feels fantastic. Unlike most games that feature sword combat, it usually feels like you are actually just beating them with a sharpened stick. In this however, you actually feel like you are using a sword. You feel the satisfaction of killing one of your enemies with your sword unlike the feeling you get in games such as Skyrim or Fallout where after you kill an enemy, your just like “Ok...onto the next enemy, I guess.” You actually feel powerful, and that is a feeling in which I have never felt from a game such as this. It’s fantastic.

In terms of combat design, it is extremely solid, if not perfect. With light and heavy combination moves that are familiar to action games, combat actually feels super exciting in this game and has actually been spot on, which has been rare for some games of this genre. While Heavy attacks do more damage and refill the fuel cells that power the God-tier special ability of Blade Mode, but light attacks are faster and can parry melee blows from Raiden's enemies. The hand-to-hand combat is also excellent and can be expanded upon with the addition of unlockable moves and quite a few interesting yet well developed weapons taken from the corpses of Desperado's most lethal. It starts simple, but Revengeance's combat builds into a harmony of a process of carefully timed deflection and counterattacks that weave into beautiful yet powerful combos. While the game’s tutorial is very light on information about combat, specifically the importance of parrying, I quickly forgive it once you get the hang of combat.

Your special ability of Blade Mode is worthy of a separate paragraph. Blade Mode is a absolutely brutal conclusion to combat encounters that pulls the game camera in closely, slows down time and lets Raiden slice apart enemies freely from essentially any angle. Blade Mode lets Raiden perform dozens of slashes in the span of mere seconds, climaxing with Raiden reaching into the carved body of his opponent and ripping out a glowing blue spine that instantly recharges his health.. It happens hundreds of times throughout the game, but it's exciting every time. These executions are satisfying every damn time you use them.

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You feel like a total badass with Blade Mode​

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And even then, absolutely destroying the common mook is consistently satisfying, but it's the handful of boss fights with the boss characters and giant mechs that deliver the game's best, yet insane encounters. Within the first fifteen minutes, you what is considered a last boss as your first boss in insane fashion, specifically speaking when Raiden body slams a colossal Metal Gear Ray — With expert combat design with energetic yet dynamic music, you end up with the game's most memorable moments.

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While I could write about the absolute fantastic combat mechanic, the game has very few but relevant flaws. The biggest of these flaws is the camera. While you are hacking up your enemies, it can be fairly easy to lose sight of enemies in certain situations, leaving the player to guess where the next attack may originate. While it’s not perfect, the developer makes up for the camera problems by making our hero extremely damage-resistant and health drops plentiful, as in they're buried within almost every enemy. But it can be frustrating during the boss battles

What I’ve discovered is that this game is ridiculously good in terms of soundtrack, worthy of having a place on my Ipod. As with "Rules of Nature", all of the battle themes for the bosses start off as instrumentals in the game, only to gain vocals and become Image Songs about the characters at perfectly timed cues when the final phase of the fight starts. And trust me, they sure do put the metal in Metal Gear


For example, the meme-worthy “Rules Of Nature” is the first song with vocals that you encounter in the game itself. Only the instrumental version plays over the Metal Gear RAY fight until you move to finish the robotic titan off. What follows is a brutal Metal Scream of the song's title that puts emphasis on the ass-kicking that Raiden is putting on the machine by describing the conflict as a battle between a wild predator and its prey. The songs actually describe the bosses themselves, such as “A Stranger I remain”, theme to the boss character Mistral, describing how she only feels at home on the battlefield fighting for a cause she believes in - the first time in her life that she's ever found one.

[video=youtube;h-rj8HVW3PQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-rj8HVW3PQ[/video]

Seriously, the soundtrack is amazing​

Between combat, Revengeance tells an exciting (if occasionally confusing) story enhanced by surreal twists and turns. In your typical Metal Gear fashion, lengthy cutscenes and dozens of insightful codec conversations between Raiden and his Maverick companions draws out the narrative and the personalities of all involved. A few of cutscenes could ramble on for too long, but some jaw dropping moments inside of the game, which I will not spoil, more than makes up for taking control away from players. But despite the extended cutscenes, Raiden's story is still the shortest Metal Gear to date. I installed and finished the game within nine hours. But despite this, the game digs deep with a suite of unlock able weapons and moves, as harder difficulties and more challenging VR Missions will reveal themselves when the time is right.

This is a fast, frantic, fun game that does its own thing. But it’s bizarre plot manages to carve out a comfortable niche within the Metal Gear franchise despite the change of pace. Platinum Games has done something incredibly rare: honoring a beloved series while successfully broadening its reach into a whole new genre. This game is fantastic.

This review was written with the assistance of nanomachines, son.​

This game has scored Nine out of Ten Lionhearts

This is just embarrassing.

The Legend of Hercules is a film directed by Renny Harlin, and stars Kellan Lutz, Scott Adkins and Gaia Weiss. The story, as the title goes, revolves around the character of Hercules, son of Zeus, who was born solely to end the life of the tyrannical king of his people, unite the lands in peace and....

Wait...What?

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I came to watch this film, and what I got what....just awful. It's poorly directed, horribly acted, disastrously written, everything about this movie is all over the damn place. This might be a reason on why we do not see many quality gladiator-esc films; these Hollywood producers are so worried about making the characters of the film act like “total 300 style badasses” that they sacrifice a quality experience. I can just picture the ideas for this movie being spoken about at meetings and drawing boards, how excited they might have been to have the opportunity to create....this....thing. I swear that this movie is trying so hard on being an action movie that it almost fails as a movie in general.

The dialogue of this film feels ridiculously forced, and makes it incredibly difficult to latch onto any of the characters. It’s just feels like someone saw an episode of Spartacus and was just like "Hey! I now know how people of that era spoke!" and wrote an entire screenplay, full of fancy words and shallow speeches that are not only boring and delivered as if the audience is a bunch of idiots, but you can tell that not a single word sounds truthful or even sincere.

We then have Hercules speaking to his clichéd, forbidden love Hebe (Yeah, that's right; HEBE!), and the conversations between the king and his sons and the rousing battle speeches that....

..I...I just can’t....I can’t continue this. But for the sake of you guys, I’ll keep marching on.

So yeah, the dialogue is appalling. The screenwriter must have also seen speeches in Braveheart and a whole bunch of action movies and must have been like "Well, we obviously need a battle speech!" and wrote a bunch of big speeches that were emotionless.


And then we have the acting. MY GOD! First of all, we have the main actor, Kellan Lutz, who came from Twilight... So you knew from the very beginning, you were going for a hell of a ride. He's is completely emotionless, stale and doesn’t care for his character for a second. His so-called ‘forbidden love’, played by Gaia Weiss, is just as bad! The only reason she was cast is because of good ol’ sex appeal! Scott Adkins almost yells every single word. He could be speaking to his wife in private, eating dinner or even doing things under the covers, he still finds the need to use the royal canterlot voice every word to her.

The only decent performance was delivered by Liam McIntyre, who plays Hercules's friend and comrade He could actually do something right, he actually had emotion and character! Despite his decent performance though, everybody but him deserves Razzie's.

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The action is just a Greek tragedy (See what I did there?). If you’ve ever seen 300; you know, that badass film with Gerald Butler and a bunch of Spartan's kicking a bunch of Persian's asses? And how the movie went into an awesome slow motion every once in a while during the fighting, when a sword was plunged deep into a body, or someone hit another over the head?

Guess what? They do it here! And is it good? **** no!

They overuse it to death, and by the end of the film, it’s not even fun, just cringe worthy every time it occurs. That being said, there is not a single moment in this film in which you worry for Hercules. Everybody knows that he's going to beat his opponents, and that makes for fights that have you bored and uninterested! Even when the great hero Hercules lacks peril in his fight scenes, you have a problem. The Greek myth of Hercules has been told so many times from viewpoints and stages of the demi-god’s story, that to make another film about it. Sometimes you really need to bring something new to the altar. For Renny Harlin, well...he’s just giving the middle finger to the gods with this movie


The CGI here is again, horrible! Every CGI aspect of this film looks atrocious and incredibly fake, and mixed in with the terrible live sets, it makes for a difficult experience. There was this once scene roughly within twenty minutes of the movie where Hercules is sent to a completely unrealistic portrayal of Ancient Egypt, on an enormous wooden ship. And then, I noticed the water CGI textures and animation that almost caused me to turn off the movie right there and then. And then there is the scene which has just hit a new low point is when Hercules kills the Nemean lion, who seemed to be minding his own business in his forest completely innocent. And what does our hero decide to do when he encounters this beast, why kill it of course!

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You know, there is only so much of a film and what makes it awful that I could take until I either turn it off or just find the whole thing unintentionally hilarious. This is exactly what happens in this movie that apparently was meant to be something of a “300” rip-off. NOTHING is original about this movie. Absolutely nothing!

Oh, and I forgot to mention that this movie had a budget of $70 million.

This film should be nominated for Razzie's, and make a minimal amount at the box office. While this might be saying much, this is easily one of the worst movies that I have ever seen since Foodfight, and the worst movie of 2014. Whatever you hear about this film, avoid it at all costs.

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Now...I need to make myself feel better. I need to think about my life....

This movie received One out of Five Lionhearts

Ah Lego, those little blocks and yellow minifigures have come a long way since they were originally created way back 65 years ago. It’s only really been since the 1980’s that it has really taken an enormous rise in popularity that has allowed it to be mainstream media. I’ve seen the rise of special minifigures and even the beginnings of Lego video games. However, this really did not affect me as a child until Lego: Star Wars was released on the PS2 back in 2005. And boy, did it really take off from there. It was everywhere around primary school at that point. I never really had any of those minifigures, I was always more interested in the games. So when they announced that they were making a Lego Movie, my younger brother was quite happy. I hoped that this movie satisfied my inner twelve year old. Because let’s face it, I’m a child at heart.



The Lego Movie was created by the writer-director duo, Phil Lord and Chris Miller, where the two fof them gave the world Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs and surprisingly, 21 Jump Street. This movie could easily be this generation's Toy Story, but we still have about six years left of this decade so I still have my hopes up to see what comes out sooner or later. This fun animated story takes us into a hyper-happy world where everything is apparently so awesome, there's even a pop styled anthem called Everything is Awesome. The adventure involves Emmet (Chris Pratt), a lowly construction worker who answers the call of a mystic prophecy to bring down the evil Lord Business (Will Ferrell), with the help of a wizard (Morgan Freeman), the sassy yet badass Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks), the god damn Batman (Will Arnett), and a whole bunch of other characters licensed by Lego. Now, to state the obvious, this movie is just one of many upon many examples of the entertainment industry colliding with standard day to day product placement. But seriously, who cares when a funny and fresh experience such as this can be done. This is really product placement done very well . Alongside the main cast of Hollywood royalty, with very notable actors being Morgan Freeman and Will Ferrell, Good Cop/Bad Cop was my favorite character in the entire movie, with Uni-Kitty being a very close second.

This is Liam Neeson. He will look for you, He will find you, and he will kill you.​

One thing that I wish to talk about is the world that we find our protagonist ‘Emmet Brickowski’ lives in. When you get past the cheery and simple-looking environment, the world of The LEGO Movie falls right into George Orwell’s ‘1984’ territory. Let’s think about this for a second. People are forcibly made to follow rules that include the suppression of creativity, free thought, and even free will. Breaking these rules would risk being ‘put to sleep’ or being caught by the Secret Police and glued? Surveillance cameras on every street corner? Posters that essentially emphasize that Big Brother Is Watching? An corrupt corporate president of the world who is hell-bent on gluing the world together (including his own citizens) in order to save it? A chief of police who swings from a sweet, lovable guy to an absolute power freak without a moment’s notice? Despite that this is obviously a kid’s movie, it hides a disturbing dystopian theme.

“ Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.”​

The story here is pretty simple, but it’s a kids’ movie, so there is no point to really have any form of complex story-line. Besides that, it still provides a lot of entertainment and laughs along the way despite it being your basic children’s flick that children, and plenty of adults, would enjoy. The main reason I went to see this movie was for the astonishing animation of the entire world, all of which was built with a computer. Detail in this world is ridiculous, with many pieces that usually go into vehicles were used to for water. Even Emmet, our protagonist and average everyday Lego figure with a job in construction lived his life according to the instructions and made absolutely no impression whatsoever on anyone around him. He was also totally committed to following the rules (always return a compliment; support the local sports team; drink overpriced coffee). Even the character development in this movie is quite impressive, adding to the detail of what is one to an entire world of detail. This movie was clearly inspired by the Toy Story series, but that is not a bad thing. The film itself is very funny and entertaining, if a little bit silly in most cases, but the animation is wonderful and inspired. I found myself just looking at all the excellent Lego animations several times. I understand why this was such a big hit now.

All of that amounts to a crazy amount of lunacy, and yet, the filmmakers still manage to sneak in one of the most surprising plot-twists of recent movie history (Not going to spoil it), and do it well. Amongst the main characters of this movie, there are other ‘Master Builders’, who are incredibly powerful individuals who could well...build anything with insane speed, and many of these builders are cameos of other famous characters. Abraham Lincoln, Han Solo, Wonder Woman, Superman, and,um... Shaq. Oh, and Batman who uses the Batmobile mostly as a speaker-system for his terrible, self-penned songs about darkness

My parents are dead!​

With an A-list voice cast and brilliant ideas with action and dialogue, and maybe even romance, happening almost masterfully. It teaches you to Believe in yourself and don't forget the value of teamwork: these are the film's two main positive messages, and are ones that will resonate with kids of all ages. Lord and Miller took the idea of Lego and turned it into something immensely fun to watch. Even if most people eventually age out of Lego, the same fate would likely not touch this movie. This movie might be talked about again within a few decades, but as a classic.

This is a film for simply everyone. It's awesome.

This movie has scored Four and a Half out of Five Lionhearts

♫ Oh no, there goes Tokyo! Go go Godzilla! ♫

Once upon the time, back in the early 2000’s, my younger self used to spend hours upon hours watching the old school Godzilla movies from the 1960s. Usually, there was other things that I could watch, stuff like Sonic X or Power Rangers. But there was something about Godzilla that fascinated me as a child. Of course, with me being so young at the time, when I watched that god-awful 1998 Hollywood attempt to created the King of Monsters that shall not be named, I thought it was cool. Now that I’m older, I’ve realised that it’s complete garbage. So when they announced a reboot, I got super excited yet paranoid about the new movie if it would live up to the hype, and when it finally came out, I went to the cinema just after my birthday to watch what Hollywood had done with good ol Godzilla a second time.

The film opens in the past. In 1954, the United States tests atomic bombs during Operation: Castle, detonating one when a large creature surfaces from the ocean. Fast-forward to 1999 and we have the head scientists of the top secret, Project Monarch, Ishiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) and Vivienne Graham (Sally Hawkins) investigate a colossal skeleton inside of a collapsed mine in the Philippines. It is there that two egg-shaped pods are discovered. One has broken open, leaving a trail to the sea while the other remains intact. Meanwhile as Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) and his wife Sandra (Juliette Binoche) head in for just another day at work for the at the Janjira nuclear power plant in Japan where they work as part of the safety team. Joe begins to feel concerned about a strangle electrical pulse that seems to be building to some sort of event, and on this particular morning, it reaches its crisis point. What would follow next would tear himself, and his family, apart.

Picking up in the present day, Joe's son Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is a bomb disarming specialist in the US military, and Joe is still grappling to make sense out of what happened in that Japanese plant was not his fault, and he felt that it was going to happen again. When Joe is arrested trying to get back to their family's old house inside what has been a quarantined zone since the incident, Ford travels to Japan to bail him out and is embarrassed by his father, still angry over everything that happened. Characters in this movie convinced that Joe is crazy, not knowing that the conspiracy theorist would be right.

So when a nuclear crisis causes the birth of a strange....bug....praying mantis....creature in Japan, it begins to set the stage for a major kaiju showdown. Naturally, I was excited for what this movie and it’s new fresh take of our favourite monster. Instead of revealing his hand right from the start and then trying to top himself, director Gareth Edwards makes you wait for the good stuff, playing games with you until the second half of the movie. And when our favourite monster finally appears, he just unleashes to the audience. We finally have a *good* modern monster movie ladies and gentlemen. Godzilla’s first appearance finally rises to his ridiculous height, a hauntingly beautiful wonder to the uncontrolled essence of nature and a symbolic reminder of nuclear weaponry/energy, and utters that ear-splitting roar that seeming shook the entire cinema. The audience I saw this with had completely went ballistic, and with good reason. I had the largest smile on my face when our ‘hero’ appeared and the crowd roared in excitement.

[video=youtube;v420wLLI5nY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v420wLLI5nY#t=10[/video]​

The human characters serve as the ‘human scale’ in this movie – to the point where we’re led to believe that our existence and our affinity for love, great novels and the sense of adventure and wonder is just a meaningless struggle. You never truly experience the characters full potential. You could almost feel their emotions but it just slips away from your grasp. You wish to feel what they feel, you wish to see what they see and you wish to experience the wonders and horrors of this movie. It comes so close but it just misses its mark. But with that being said, the characters themselves were great and there isn't a single bad performance. Yet again, this is a monster movie. If there was a bit more human drama, then this had the potential to be an absolute masterpiece. But of course, this movie is not exactly about humanity. It’s about a giant reptile locked in mortal combat with two also giant insects and humanity tries to survive the onslaught that is left behind. Not only is it not ridiculous, it’s amazing.

Spoiler: “And just when you think that the fighting in this movie was not good enough, this happens....”

Holy Jumping Jesus on a pogostick, Batman. Is that atomic breath ?

Godzilla has its own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in California. (It’s true!). The King of Monsters is an icon of the industry that loved and revered by many, not to mention his pop culture status. I originally thought that this movie, like the Hollywood version before it, was going to be awful. Since the first monster movies appeared on our screens many moons ago, it usually was made up of various city-stomping fever in a man against nature vibe. But it’s only been recently that the style that is been taken on these movies have not only evolved, but has been inspiring to me as technology tends to evolve from time to time. From his humble and respectful updating of the original Toho monster, Godzilla himself is purely a monster, standing at 350ft tall (Which is enormous when put in comparison to the older movies, where he stood at only 50 ft tall).

The fight scenes went something like this​

The CGI in this film is just ridiculously good; I’ve never seen anything done as well as this is at the moment. The majority of the movie is focused on humanity and the struggles that make our species, but when a Kaiju appears onto the screen, it’s going down. Unfortunately, there is not enough of it. The movie builds from a slow start to an absolutely colossal climax. Depending on your tastes, it either worked or it didn’t. I liked how this movie was built through this technique, which is a page from Steven Spielberg’s book, but it’s unfortunately not for everyone if you wanted to see two hours of solid kaiju fighting. And for people and critics who complain there wasn't enough Godzilla in this movie, have they ever heard of ‘tension-building'?

A powerful monster film, Godzilla is a satisfying blockbuster made by a "small" director with a great eye for detail, perspective and performance. I can safely say that this absolutely destroys the 1998 version. The acting is very impressive, the CGI is absolutely brilliant and the soundtrack was also very good. If the acting of the human characters were to be any better, this would have received an almost perfect rating. Godzilla is well worth seeing, and with a future sequel already in the works, this could be the start of an awesome series.

After all, a King's arrival is never silent...​

This movie received Three and a Half out of Five Lionhearts

How do you improve a slasher movie about good old Mr Voorhees, Camp Crystal Lake’s very own deranged groundskeeper while keeping a ‘Modern and fresh’ appeal onto a classic franchise.

Easy, set the movie in the future and put him on a spaceship.

It is the year 2008 (five years after Freddy vs. Jason took place) and Jason Voorhees is captured by the United States government and held at the Crystal Lake Research Facility. In 2010, a government scientist decides to place Jason in frozen stasis after several failed attempts to kill him with a bunch of wacky scientists hoping to look into Jason’s rapid regeneration abilities for their own purposes.

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Unsurprisingly breaking free of his restraints, Jason kills the guards protecting him as a survivor named Rowan lures Jason into an "ice" pod and activates it. Just as the Cryogenic stasis chamber performs it’s magic, good ol’ Jason ruptures the pod with his machete and stabs Rowan in the abdomen as the room soon froze over. 445 years later in 2455, Earth has become too polluted to support life and has moved to a new planet, Earth Two. We then follow a team of scientists finding Jason and Rowan and taking them onto their ship and trying to reawaken both of them.

And it all goes downhill from there...

This movie is a slasher movie, so when it comes to having a nice fascinating story, do not expect anything worthy of being placed in a museum. The fact that this is the tenth movie in the Friday the 13th franchise alone is an achievement. This movie has been attacked ruthlessly by other critics across the internet and in real life, but seriously, it’s a sequel to Friday the 13th, were they really expecting something special out of this? Yet again, would you really expect something special out of what is easily the worst sequel of the entire franchise? Anyway, let’s kick this review into motion.

The plot of the story is that in layman’s terms, its Jason in space killing a bunch of annoying characters. Any sort of horror in this movie is now gone, alongside the days of Jason simply committing killing sprees on Camp Crystal Lake. The story is cheesy enough to be placed onto a sandwich and be eaten. The whole aspect of ‘Jason Voorhees in space’ is enough to either force you to watch the movie or essentially turn your attention off straight away. It’s basically ‘Jason is found, people from the future bring him back to life unaware of who he is, Jason takes out machete and then proceeds to kill almost the entire spaceship to the last man and women and then the remainder of the story focuses on this ‘last survivor’ or survivors finding a way to defeat Jason.’ It’s the same formula for almost any other Slasher movie, although to me, slasher movies rank low for me. But at least the producers were creative enough make something new instead of having another ‘Jason in the present killing horny teenagers’ movie. But....oh wait, did I mention the sex that is smothered like butter across this movie. Yep, that’s still there. *Sigh*

Oh yeah, and Jason becomes a god-damn cyborg at some point in the movie

Nanomachines, son ​

There is almost no characterizations at all in this movie and the killings are not really very interesting, yet alone done well. Some of the characters have the audacity to say really stupid jokes while they are dying. You are stuck with boring characters, many of whom have little to no relevance in the plot and only exist to serve Jason and his staggeringly high body-count (Funfact, Jason has the highest body-count of any slasher villain of over 300+ in all, ironically, 13 movies that he’s been in.) That being said, further into what is already a terrible yet somewhat watchable movie, he wipes out the entire population of a space-station and then the spaceship he was on. These characters are not only unlikeable and boring, but seeing how it’s a slasher movie, you know exactly what is going to happen to them sooner or later. The plot is weak, so weak that you could likely break all the bones in it’s body if you poked it. The horror element is practically non-existent and dumb, but this franchise movies abandoned making it’s franchise actually scare long ago in favour of just providing dumb story-telling with bloody death scenes, which this film certainly provides. Jason’s victims are sliced in half, impaled on large spikes, blown up, one unfortunate female meet her maker when she had her head dunked in liquid nitrogen and shattered on a desk (Which honestly, was quite cool). While you get to watch these characters die and as you watch them live about their daily lives and their duties, they are so one-dimensional and cheesy to the point where you would stop caring about the characters within the first fifteen minutes of the movie. Visual aspects are terrible, but where Just good enough to entertain my eyes. They all end up dying horrifically and then while the civilian characters are now basically useless to fight against this killing machine, we’re treated to what is likely one of the worst scenes in the entire movie. During the climax of the film, the would be victims try to distract Jason with two hologram girls. These girls offer Jason a beer, some pot, they strip naked and then proclaim, “We love premarital sex.”

Jason isn’t into this sort of thing... ​

While this movie is horrible, it’s really just another teen slasher movie based on a thirty year old franchise that is begging someone to essentially put it out of its misery. However, it does not mean that the movie is not fun. I would not define this as a 'real' movie, but much more than I ever expected from "Friday the 13th" ever again. I'd say it is the only really watchable entry in the series in several years, and if there are no more after the 2009 remake (and I hope not), "Jason X" is not a bad way for FXIII to end.

This is just one of those movies. Stupid, yet enjoyable. If you wish to watch this, turn off your brain and your concept of realism. Sit down with a friend and laugh.

This movie has scored two out of five Lionhearts.